


sinks, flowers, paperwhites

by ambrosiachild



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Movie, credence is learning magic!, gellert is in love. probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 04:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8734936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambrosiachild/pseuds/ambrosiachild
Summary: credence, flowers, and heartache. or something along those lines; gellert isn't yet quite sure.





	

In the morning, you leave the little flat you’ve been masquerading as a home for a quick skip into the apothecary on the corner of St-Augustine’s. 

You leave a lot. Your mornings always begin before the first breath of dawn, when the sky is a still, muted shade of dusted grey-blue, when the yellow edge of daylight is still far off in the horizon, climbing slowly over the clouds. You leave a lot—you leave very early—but the point is—because there is a point, see—the point is that you come back before the winds of your greater plans can sweep you off and away. You have always been restless, that’s all, and no matter whose skin you have ever worn, you’ve made sure to draw your days out long enough that nothing ever feels like a total waste. 

So you walk your walk across St-Augustine’s, you walk your walk into the apothecary that never seems to be closed, you walk through a quaint and quiet town like you aren’t who you are, like you are as harmless as anybody even if some days all you want to do is raze the entire street into ashes with how frustrated your stilted plans—a faraway, close-but-not greater good—leave you.

You have your goals, after all, and between your goals you have your errands, and because you are so fastidious you couldn't possibly imagine delegating simple things like fetching phials and black market ingredients from the hidden, seedy rooms sold by hidden, seedy wizards to anybody but yourself. A distant, cautious part of you is aware you may be better off not promenading around public squares so often, wanted as you are, notorious as your reputation and war crimes have made you, but you have never been one for paranoia and really, your glamours hold as strong as they always have. 

Paranoia is for criminals; daring to tread all lines is for revolutionaries. 

On your way back you buy an armful of flowers even though the kitchen sink is still bursting with all sorts: gardenias, gladioli, hollyhocks, sweet peas, snapdragons and so many colourful more. Credence’s current obsession are flowers. The kitchen sink is full of them, the windowsills all lined with makeshift glass vases overflowing with various blooms. There are very few things he enjoys apart from them, would choose wilting, drooping daisies over a new waistcoat, and while you have never much cared for them yourself, you indulge him. The bouquet you've bought today is pure white, because the sheet-covered sky made it seem like a good idea, and you think that the sweet smell of freesias-paperwhites-irises-and-orchids might make Credence smile. 

He's been doing it more and more lately. You wonder briefly if perhaps his mouth curves at the sight of you only because the flowers distract from how your face hasn't yet been committed to his memory, hasn't yet painted fully over the serious, knitted brows of the other Graves. 

You wonder if you really could just leave him. If one of these days, you’ll leave with the morning because the shape of Percival Graves hasn’t yet left his mind.

It takes unlocking the door the muggle way, all troublesome with a key, to stop yourself crushing the flowers in a quick flash of rage. 

"Mr. Graves," comes his papery voice the moment you step in, and while he's never called you anything else and it normally wouldn't bother you so much, perhaps it'd come too soon because there you are, squeezing on the stems, strangling them slowly in such a way that you contemplate letting him see. "Mr. Graves, look."

You want to say, "No, my boy, you look," but he steps into view, buttons in his hands, and the delight all over his face is such that your grip on the flowers loosens because it's all soft and delicate-beautiful. 

"I transfigured them all myself, Mr. Graves," he says, words coming along together so quickly it may have been a single drawn-out stutter. Inexplicably, your chest is suddenly full to bursting—it may easily have contained blooming buds crawling beneath your entire rib cage. "Just like you showed me."

"Dear boy," you say, breathing out the words like his smile is stealing them right from you. "Credence, you truly are a marvel." You set down the flowers and bag full of phials and stoppered potionstuff and take his hands in yours, causing them to tremble and open on instinct just for you. A pile of buttons fall down like a shower—big ones and small ones and wobbly-dented ones and shiny-round ones—only for you to curl his fingers closed just so you may kiss each one. And you do, a kiss on every finger, your pride in tenfold, his quivering hands cupped between yours, before you lean up to kiss him properly, tasting his mouth, licking into it just because, relishing the way he whimpers a little bit against you. 

"Show me," you tell him once you break apart for air. You love to watch the heavy way he breathes after you kiss, love how the red of his lips matches the red of all his favourite flowers. 

"Okay Mr. Graves," he says right away, fetching the new wand you’d bought him, transfiguring a plucked orchid into a tiny little button fit for a bracelet's clasp, white as the flower, iridescent as a pearl. His smile appears as yours widens, growing with the pile of buttons, and you think he might even be close to beaming once you join in, when you say, "Look at this, my dear," and transfigure all the couch cushions into giant buttons with the wave of your wand before transfiguring them back. 

Your heart aches from the bright of his smile, an indescribable sensation you can only think to call an ache. You don’t understand it. But Credence, who is so brilliant and wonderful, Credence picks up on these things, has always been able to pick up on so many of your feelings before you can even begin to parse through them yourself. He approaches you slowly, carefully, dropping his buttons, ducking his forehead into your shoulder all bird-like in his hiding ways. "Thank you," he says—not Thank-You-Mr.-Graves, just thank-you, like he knows about your secret, stupid fixations, the ones that make no sense because you know he knows you aren't Graves. 

Like magic, your flower-heart blooms, so you kiss him all over again.


End file.
